


musings on love

by untiltheveryend



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: aka my biography, all of the romance is very platonic and sweet, this is a story about love and best friends and the intersection between those two things, totally ace/aro friendly basically
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-22
Updated: 2015-10-22
Packaged: 2018-04-27 13:48:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5050861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/untiltheveryend/pseuds/untiltheveryend
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are things about Perry that LaF has always loved. The way she pushes through her insecurity and speaks up anyway. The way she sees the quiet ones, the scared ones, and cares about them gently and without thought.</p><p>The way she looks at the sky and sees nothing but pinpricks of light. It is strangely calming and inexplicably grounding. It keeps LaF safe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	musings on love

**Author's Note:**

> the fact that this story exists at all is the fault of [geoclaire](http://geoclaire.tumblr.com/) (and [bannedfromzoos](http://bannedfromzoos.tumblr.com/) as well a little). I wrote the first couple paragraphs and they cajoled me into making it a proper story. this story is not beta-ed so sorry for any mistakes.
> 
> (and sorry that it's a bit late, life and that innit. life in the nursery room doesn't leave a lot of leftover energy at the end of the day.)

When you know someone really, really well - like ‘i’ve seen you pick your nose and eat it’ kind of close - loving them is this huge, inevitable, messy thing that you don’t really understand but you rely on all the same. It’s always there, a constant. You take it for granted. Sometimes you forget.

There are things about Perry that LaF has always hated. Her insecurity in her own intelligence. The way she tries so hard to please other people and so often forgets about her own needs. They way she sees the world right up close and still somehow misses all the details.

There are things about Perry that LaF has always loved. The way she pushes through her insecurity and speaks up anyway. The way she sees the quiet ones, the scared ones, and cares about them gently and without thought.

The way she looks at the sky and sees nothing but pinpricks of light. It is strangely calming and inexplicably grounding. It keeps LaF safe.

 

The problem with loving someone is that it ties you to them. You drag them down with you. You lift them up. It hurts to hold your breath long enough to push both of you to the surface, your lungs burn in your chest while you fight to save two lives not one. You don’t choose this, you _are_ this.

Perry used to pack LaF’s lunchbox. She used to scream half the time she walked into LaF’s room, and then immediately start cleaning. When LaF grabbed her hand, they would feel her relax, just fractionally. When they were linked together like that, it kept both of them still.

LaF isn’t sure when life started pulling them apart - isn’t even sure if it was life after all. Maybe it was something bigger or maybe it was really the two of them all along. Maybe LaF pulled away first, without even knowing it. They aren’t sure anymore. 

Because here is the thing about love.

You take it for granted.

You love someone long enough, and it stops being a choice. So you stop choosing. And then one day you realise that when love isn’t a choice, it fades away. How could you forget? It’s like waking up and trying to remember how to get your heart to beat. A long forgotten memory that might have been a dream.

It is still instinct, to reach out and expect that Perry will be there to take LaF’s hand. There is nothing LaF misses more than being tied down.

One of these days LaF thinks they might just float away.

 

The scientist part of LaF (which is the big part of LaF, if they’re honest) knows that love is just a chemical reaction. Phenylethylamine, dopamine, oxytocin. Stimulants and endorphins. LaF knows all this, and yet none of it fully explains the reality of loving someone. 

Love is about more than just sweaty palms and a rush of elation. 

LaF loves Laura. The way she _pushes_ , all the time. At the world, at Carmilla, at her friends. She makes LaF think of the old irresistible force paradox - ‘What happens when an immovable object meets an unstoppable force?’. If there ever was an unstoppable force, LaF thinks Laura would be it.

LaF loves JP. The way he tells jokes that are only funny if you have a firm grasp on both quantum theory and the extended works of Goethe. The way thousands of facts sit at the tips of his fingers, but reassurances drip from his tongue like water from a leaky tap. LaF can see each one coming, watch the way it tastes in JP’s mouth. They can see his reluctance, and patiently wait it out. It isn’t a game, because there are no rules. And that is scary, but LaF can’t remember a time when they loved anything that didn’t scare them. 

(Perry likes to worry, because it makes her feel in control. LaF likes to be a little bit terrified.)

Most of all, LaF loves Perry. Or maybe that should be _loved_ Perry. 

 

This isn’t an area in which LaF excels. It isn’t tangible or exact. The variables aren’t just uncontrollable (LaF kind of likes uncontrollable variables) they are _undefinable_. When you don’t even know what something is, or whether it exists or not, how are you supposed to understand it?

This is what it is like, thinking about the way they love Perry. It is a tangle of smiles exchanged over bicycle handlebars, the hot disappointment in LaF’s stomach as Perry calls them ‘Susan’ yet again, two warm palms pressed together and the way Perry’s name sounds when LaF says it. Reverent and familiar. 

It isn’t until they lose Perry in the chaos - lost, not left behind, never left behind - that LaF finds clarity.

Standing in the pitch black tunnels underground, listening to the sounds of two people breathing, LaF feels Perry’s absence right deep down inside them. It’s an ache or an emptiness. It _hurts._

 

Maybe that is the real truth. The people you love are the people you cannot stand to lose. The ones who worm their way inside of you, until their absence leaves a hole that you have no idea how to fill. Until they leave you broken, torn. _Incomplete._

When LaF was little, Perry would read fairy stories out loud to them. They had a book of the kind of stories that they don’t tell in Disney movies. The ones without happy endings, where the naughty children got hacked to pieces. Perry liked the one about the Little Mermaid, even though she turned to sea foam in the end. 

Stories are just stories. They fade away when you close the book.

LaF wishes that this part was a story. The part where they lose two thirds of the people they love and the world starts crumbling to pieces. Weird, LaF can handle. LaF can handle big and scary and mean. The world doesn’t have happy endings, so all you can do is be the kind of person who hacks the bad guys into pieces and not the other way around. But not this. Not betrayal and loss. 

You can’t kill a monster that you aren’t even sure exists. 

You can’t pick up a blowtorch and defend yourself against the sinking feeling in your own stomach when you remember that your best friend could be dead, or worse. 

 

Maybe LaF forgot how to choose Perry. And maybe it was dumb, and maybe they regret it. Because the thing about losing someone for real is that you realise how close they were before. LaF was too busy missing the feeling of Perry’s hand in their own, they forgot to notice that all they had to do was reach out and grab it. And now-

Now Perry isn’t right by LaF’s side anymore.

LaF loves Perry. The way she twitches her nose when she secretly thinks something is funny. The way everything she does feels like it has a purpose and a place, an endless list of tasks, neatly completed. LaF loves the way they never feel like a task that Perry needs to tick off or complete. Perry is the order to LaF’s chaos, an endless and perfectly balanced cycle. Any old thing might be enough to nudge it out of sync. 

 

Perry is gone now.

And LaF knows now.

Knows to miss her. Knows what loving her felt like, and what losing her feels like. Knows that they could bear being called Susan a hundred times if it meant having Perry’s hand back in theirs.

Knows that all of this knowing has come somewhat too late.

But here is the thing about love.

It doesn’t stop just because you know it should. And when you know someone like the back of your hand (or maybe even better than that), loving them is not easy. It is long nights and early mornings. It is a treasured memory that has to be thought of often in case it fades away.

And LaF is not willing to give it up just like that.

**Author's Note:**

> if you liked it, let me know! my tumblr is [ellianderjoy](http://ellianderjoy.tumblr.com/).


End file.
